Posts tagged ‘North Korea’

According to historians who are really good at remembering when things happened in the olden days, sex and love existed before the Internet was even invented.

Before 56K dial-up, phones, and even Tinder, humans found ways to interact completely offline and engage in sexual activity. In fact, biologists believe that the human proclivity for sex is universal and plays a major role in producing baby humans, thereby maintaining the human race’s existence. (Go humans!)

So could it be that in North Korea too, people have sex and fall in love and do romantic things with each other?

According to North Korean refugees that I’ve worked with, the answer is: Yes. North Koreans have sex too.

So, how do North Koreans do it?

First of all, the baseline to understand is that overall North Korean dating culture is pretty traditional and conservative. Think South Korea, but 50 years ago. One of the reasons for this is, well, North Korean society is quite conservative and patriarchal in general and North Korean media is super old-fashioned. In North Korean films you don’t see couples kissing or being physically affectionate with each other, so many North Koreans are just not used to PDA and wouldn’t dream of being too affectionate or kissing in public.

South Korean government officials revealed on Wednesday that a U.S. citizen was caught attempting to cross the river border between South and North Korea.

The man, who reportedly is in his early 30s, was taken into custody by South Korean Marines. The man was attempting to swim across the Han River, to head into North Korea around 11:55pm from Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province.

A U.S. citizen was caught trying to cross a river border between South and North Korea, government sources said Wednesday.

When asked, the man responded, “My purpose was to meet the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un”.

Officially revealed that the man was swimming with the current when he grew tired and laid low near the riverside, and was arrested by Marines. They continued to say, “I believe this is the first time an American tried to flee to the North through Gimpo area”

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A video of three Korean women dancing in leotards is rumoured to be the ‘sex tape’ Kim Jong-Un used to justify the execution of his ex-girlfriend.

The seemingly innocuous clip shows the trio dancing to a version of Elvis’ Aloha Oe in cowboy hats and tasselled skirts.

However reports from China – North Korea’s only ally – that it was this video that led to the execution of Hyon Song-wol and 11 other entertainers.

A South Korean newspaper reported last week that Hyon had been killed by machine gun fire amid claims that she had been appearing in pornographic videos.

Twelve singers, musicians and dancers from two pop groups are said to have been executed on August 20.

It was reported that they were accused of making videos of themselves performing sex acts and then selling the recordings.

Some of the musicians were also reported to have had Bibles, which are banned in North Korea, when they were detained and all were treated as political dissidents.

The isolated and secretive state has not commented and reports are almost impossible to verify.

A user on China’s video-sharing website YouKu uploaded the video of the dancing trio and said it was the supposed ‘sex tape’, reported The Daily Dot.

The video has been watched 700,000 times.

China’s chnqiang news website said one of the dancers was Hyon.

Because Kim’s wife, Ri Sol-ju, was once a member of the same group as the executed singer, North Korea analysts suggested that she might have given her consent to the execution.

Fuelling the speculation, there have been rumours that her husband was still seeing Hyon.

Without facing trial Hyon, said to be 28, and other members of North Korea’s most famous pop groups were marched in front of a firing squad and gunned down while their families and other members of the groups were ordered to watch.

The victims’ families and friends were then taken away to a labour camp, having been found ‘guilty by association’.

North Korea has very little contact with the outside world and it is unlikely that the reason for the execution will ever be confirmed.

But Professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, a Japanese expert on Korean affairs, said it was ‘simply not believable’ the entertainers were executed for making pornography, as they could simply have been made to ‘disappear’ in the prison system. He said: ‘As Kim’s wife once belonged to the same group, it is possible that these executions are more about Kim’s wife.’

Kim, 30, who succeeded his late father as supreme leader of North Korea in 2011, met Hyon ten years ago when he returned from studying in Switzerland. However, his father, Kim Jong-il, disapproved of the relationship and ordered the friendship to end.

Hyon went on to marry an officer in the North Korean military and is believed to have had a baby.

But rumours circulated that Kim was still secretly seeing her, which might account for reports that he was seen with a mystery woman in the months before his marriage to Ri, which was disclosed last July. Ri and Kim are said to have a baby daughter.

Such is the secrecy surrounding Kim’s life it was initially reported that Ri was the singer who performed a series of bizarrely titled patriotic songs that had, apparently, stirred the nation.

However, it was really Hyon who had recorded Footsteps of Soldiers, I Love Pyongyang, She is a Discharged Soldier and We are Troops of the Party.

Ri was also given credit for Excellent Horse-Like Lady – also known as A Girl in the Saddle of a Steed – another of Hyon’s songs.

Kim has already displayed the ruthlessness that has made his family the world’s only communist dynasty, beginning with grandfather Kim Il-sung at the end of the Korean War in 1953.

He is said to have purged his stepmother from her position as a senior official in the ruling party to show his absolute power and had a minister executed by mortar round for showing disrespect by drinking during the official mourning period after Kim Jong-il’s death.

According to The Envoy, North Korea’s military vowed a new and unusually specific threat to its neighbors, saying it would reduce South Korea “to ashes” in less than four minutes.

The statement, released Monday when programming was interrupted on North Korea’s state TV by a special report, comes amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Earlier this month, North Korea was unsuccessful in a long-range missile launch, prompting worries that North Korea may conduct another nuclear test. South Korean officials say new satellite images show that North Korea has been digging a tunnel in what appears to be preparation for a third atomic test.

According to the Associated Press, the statement from North Korea was unusual in promising something soon and in describing a specific period of time.

The North Korean military threatened to “reduce all the rat-like groups and the bases for provocations to ashes in three or four minutes, (or) in much shorter time, by unprecedented peculiar means and methods of our own style.”

For months the North has castigated South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and the conservative administration for insulting their leadership and criticizing a new cruise missile capable of striking anywhere in the south.

South Korean officials responded, urging North Korea to end the threats. “We urge North Korea to immediately stop this practice,” Unification Ministry spokesman Kim Hyung-suk said, according to the Associated Press. “We express deep concern that the North’s threats and accusations have worsened inter-Korean ties and heightened tensions.”

Meanwhile, in a meeting Sunday with a North Korean delegation in Beijing, China’s senior official on foreign policy praised the leadership shown by North Korea’s new young leader, Kim Jong Un.

The meeting follows the April 13 launch of what the United States called a disguised ballistic missile test by North Korea. The rocket disintegrated minutes after launch.